Lawyers spend most of their time being analytical, it is a fundamental part of the job and a fundamental skill to be a successful legal professional.
It is perhaps therefore a paradox that there are still a significant number of law firms that don’t use analytics when it comes to knowing what their clients are like and what they want. This is especially the case when the available analytics in this area are freely available and incredibly in-depth when it comes to the law firm’s online presence.
Most lawyers now know that their firms online presence is hugely significant. Many seem also to be vaguely aware of google analytics. For those that still may not know, it is incredibly easy to install a line of code into the back end of your website which hooks you up with google and you will then have access to a huge amount of information about visitors to your site, where they come from, what they do on your site. This is very powerful information.
For example, did you know that, when it comes to visiting a law firm website, the average time spent on a page will be less than 2 minutes ? This in turn means that most visitors will not stop to read an in-depth treatise about the nuances of a recent case. What they are instead looking for is information set out in snippets which gives them an insight into what they are looking for.
Take your own online browsing behaviour into account. If you don’t find what you want and fast, don’t you now bounce away and find it elsewhere ?
So, you have 2 minutes or less to show who you are and what you do. This is completely akin to the elevator pitch, and a skill which is incredibly relevant and important. Unless you are writing for a legal blog which you know is going to be read by other lawyers, your audience is not going to be looking for high brow law or writing which shows how clever and knowledgeable you are. In fact they are looking to see whether you can explain the essence of a legal topic or issue within 2 minutes.
Returning to analytics. It is worth detailed analysis of your analytics to see which pages are most popular on your site, and analyse why, and then adopt the same approach top other pages. It is worth also working actively to improve the figure for time spent on site and on a page, since google may well be taking these into account to decide which site and which page are prominently ranked in the all important page 1 of google search results.
James Swede is Senior Partner at Darlingtons Solicitors, who have a range of websites including an employment law site and one for family law as well.
